Rampant (30 page)

Finally, we pulled off the highway and onto a local road winding up a hill into the center of town. Shops and restaurants lined the streets, and a wide, tree-filled park ran down the middle of the road. Pretty. Picturesque, even, if you ignored the bloodshed I could sense on every corner. Every telephone pole was plastered with a lost dog poster. Cory blinked back tears as we drove by one that looked like her puppy, Galahad, back home.

“Val,” I called into the back seat. “You’re on.”

“What,” Giovanni muttered, “you can’t just use your spider sense to direct us?”

“Not here,” Zelda said. “This whole area is crawling with unicorns.”

“Left at the top,” Valerija broke in. “A small road…”

Giovanni followed Valerija’s directions in silence. The road wound over a hill, following signs for farms, restaurants, and historical sites, and then hit another straightaway.

“Here,” Valerija said. “On the left.” The villa came into view. It looked pretty. Peaceful, even, with its brick balconies and terra-cotta roof tiles. There was a garden and a fountain in the yard, a tiny vineyard, a stone terrace overlooking a little pond.

And five mean-looking German shepherds patrolling the
fence line. Strange—there’d been a marked lack of animals anywhere else in town. Apparently, Marten’s deal with the kirin extended to his pets as well.

“Here?” Giovanni asked, slowing.

I shook my head. “A little farther.”

Cory leaned forward again. “Won’t they know we’re here?”

I gripped my knife handle and took a deep breath. “They’ll know soon enough.”

As the edge of the sky began to catch fire, eight hunters lined up beside a gravel road. Before us was a low wooden fence; beyond lay the field of battle.

Well,
field
was a bit misleading. Below us lay a sunken, mazelike path riddled with grass-covered mounds, dead ends, blind alleys, sharp corners, collapsed tombs and archways, high walls, and other disadvantages. Here and there, giant, spear-shaped Italian cypresses shot skyward like unicorn horns or sharpened swords. Mist gathered in the nooks and crannies of the paths, making the largest tombs look like islands floating on a roiling gray sea, their grassy summits silver and violet with dew. I hadn’t planned on such a reduction in visibility. I hadn’t realized we’d be hunting in a labyrinth.

The kirin had chosen well.

At my side, Cory shouldered her bow and consulted an archaeological map she’d scored from the museum in Rome. “The Xs mark the tombs big enough to house a kirin, but keep in mind that they aren’t necessarily hiding inside. As we talked about before, if you’re feeling overwhelmed, circle back to Rosamund, who will be remaining at the fallback position here”—she pointed with one finger to a place marked on the
map—“which is where that pine tree sticks out of the wall along the main drag…” She spotted it through the mist and pointed again. “The Via degli Inferni.”

“The Path of Hell,” Giovanni translated. I turned around. He was leaning out of the driver’s side window. “Are you sure you don’t want me to get on top of the van, work as a spotter?”

The hunters stifled their giggles. A spotter! For kirin!

“Stay inside and stay down,” I repeated. “Please. Don’t even watch.”

He scowled, rolled up the window of the van, and scrunched down in the driver’s seat.

I turned back to the sunken, fog-filled warren. This was it. I’d brought us here. Now I had to get us through it. I breathed deep, smelling dew and dirt, undercut with the acrid scent of unicorn. When I closed my eyes, I could feel them, like pulse points spread out over a body. I knew the hunters felt them, too, dozens of kirin, blood drunk and sleeping, nestled tightly inside ancient tombs meant for a people long gone.

I hoped to make their slumber permanent.

At my side, Rosamund’s head was bowed, and she clutched the cross at her throat and prayed. I grabbed her free hand and bowed my head, too, and before I knew it, Ursula slipped her palm against mine. German, French, English, and Romanian blended together as the hunters joined in a circle, murmuring our most fervent wishes: that we’d be triumphant, that we’d survive. After a moment, Rosamund lifted her head and smiled at us. “Do you hear it?” she asked. “The chord, like the wall. It beats in my blood.”

In the circle, the hunters began to nod, the revelation changing each of their expressions from terror to determination.
My blood sang with a hunter’s power. We could do this.

“Let’s get started,” I said, and I watched the first hunters descend into the maze.

I turned around. Giovanni was staring at me through the window of the van. I walked over and pressed my palm against the glass. He mirrored me from the other side.

Go,
he mouthed.
I’ll wait for you.

“Now our turn,” Cory announced. I stepped over the fence line and into the path of hell.

T
HE DREAMS OF UNICORNS
are not pretty. The one nestled in the tomb on my right was remembering uncovering the den of a wild pig and her seven piglets. I dispatched him while their death squeals still echoed in my head. The one on my left woke from a dream of two campers in a pup tent a split second before my first arrow pierced his eye. He died before he could rise.

I continued down the corridor; and the hillocks rose around me, blocking my view of anything but the narrow, grassy tunnel on every side. Up ahead, I sensed two unicorns, very close together. A mother and a colt.

A baby unicorn? Could I? Could I kill a nursing mother?

Then, in the distance, the sound I’d been dreading—the clash of steel against horn. All at once, like a wave, they awoke. I heard them growling, then roaring; and the air was suddenly filled with shouts and the twang of bowstrings.

I turned away from the mother and colt and bolted down a side street, flying past tomb entrances I hoped were empty, scrambling up the side of the nearest scalable mound to get a
better view. The mist had thickened with the coming dawn; and now it swirled beneath me like a stormy sea, as the half-invisible kirin darted to and fro down the alleys and in and out of the ruins, pursued by hunters who looked like little more than dark blobs in the soup.

I waved at Rosamund, our lookout, but she was too busy firing into the maze to respond.

“Help!” I heard Zelda cry from nearby, and I hurried down the hill, leaped the last few feet, and dropped to the ground. A kirin whizzed past, and I shot from five yards as it quartered away. The arrow passed cleanly through both lungs and clattered against the tomb wall on the far side. I took off in pursuit, but the animal didn’t make it more than another ten or fifteen steps before it dropped, motionless, to the ground.

I stopped short, almost tripping over the body. What? I’d gotten a pass-through. Those wounds should have healed right up. I examined the entrance wound. It still bled freely. Had I hit its heart?

Zelda screamed again, and I hopped over the body and kept running. I found her at the end of a blind alley, fending off a pair of kirin with a small ax while trying to climb backward up a hillock whose ancient stones and red earth crumbled beneath her feet.

There wasn’t enough room to shoot. If I got another pass-through, I might hit Zelda. I shouldered my bow and pulled out the claymore, raising the sword high and rushing forward as the unicorns’ attention was focused on her.

I wasn’t quick enough. One kirin turned and reared just as I reached it, knocking its hooves hard against my arm. The sword flew out of my grasp and tumbled away. As the unicorn landed,
the tip of its horn sliced hard down my chest and left forearm, ripping through my shirt and my flesh. I shouted in pain as it lifted its head again and slammed me back against the stone. I felt his horn scrape the stone near my cheek, then slide into the soft tuffa. He’d missed, but I was trapped beneath him.

Blood poured from the cut on my arm, and the unicorn gnashed its teeth in my face and kicked, trying desperately to free its horn from the side of the hill.

“Zelda!” I yelled over its roars. “Help me!”

“Un moment,”
she yelled back, as metal severed the morning air from her direction.

Its fangs were in my face, its breath hot and reeking of ashes and rot. I tried to read its mind, but the only word I could see was
kill.
I tried to slide out of the way, but my shirt was caught, and the kirin kicked and reared with hooves like sledgehammers. My arm was healing, the wound knitting and the blood slowing a little more with every breath. I shoved at the kirin’s muzzle, and it snapped its jaw in my face, digging its horn another inch deeper into the stone in order to get close enough to bite my head off.

My knife! I reached down toward the sheath with my right hand, gripping the handle tight. With one firm thrust, I shoved it up under the kirin’s jaw and straight into its brain.

It slumped, and I pulled out, palming the blade with hands drenched by blood—mine and the unicorn’s. Zelda still fought. I ran toward her, cupping my injured arm. There was no way I’d be able to shoot a bow right now, and the two-handed claymore was out of the question. But I still had my knife.

I’d almost reached her when the other kirin knocked the ax from her hands and reared up for the death blow. Zelda threw
up her arms to protect her face and I raised my own knife, knowing I was too far to reach.

Above us, a giant shadow covered the dawn sky. I froze. The karkadann stood on the summit of the hill, horn lowered at the kirin, who dropped abruptly to all fours and stared.

For a moment, the world stopped, a slowing that made my hunter sense seem, by comparison, like a speeding train. The karkadann dared the kirin to test his wrath. And the unremitting bloodlust that poured from the kirin in waves gave way, for just a split second, to defiance. It charged.

So did Bucephalus.

The karkadann caught the kirin up by the belly, lifting the smaller unicorn on his giant horn and tossing him in the air like a dead leaf. Zelda cowered as the beasts clashed over her head, and then the kirin was dashed against the wall and rolled to the ground. It tried to rise once or twice, but its legs would not support it, and it began to whine, as blood and substances that were not blood poured freely from the hole in its gut.

I stood like a statue in the middle of the path. The karkadann tilted its head back at me, then galloped off. I rushed to Zelda.

“You okay?”

She nodded, then said thickly, “And you?”

I wiped blood off on my pants. “I’ll be fine.”

“Was that a…karkadann?”

“Yeah.” I braced for the next question. The part about how it didn’t kill us.

She cocked her head at the dying kirin, whose whines had now turned to high-pitched squeals of agony. I knew just how it felt. “Why isn’t it…healing?”

“I don’t know,” I said, retrieving my bow and sword. “Maybe
it’s susceptible to karkadann venom.”

“No,” Zelda said. “The others, too. That I shot with my arrows. All of them—they didn’t heal.” She picked up her ax, walked calmly over to the kirin, and brought the blade down on the creature’s neck. The ax didn’t make it all the way through its spine, but it was enough to put the unicorn out of its misery.

I watched her, dumbfounded. “That happened to me, too. I got a pass-through and it went right down. I thought I’d hit it through the heart or something.”

“What’s wrong with these kirin?” she asked.

I fingered the alicorn-tipped arrows on my quiver. “Maybe it’s not them. That night, in the grove near the highway—those unicorns bled, too. And the re’em…” I remembered slitting its throat with my alicorn knife. Maybe the reason we’d had a harder time before was that we hadn’t been using the old weapons, the ones made with alicorn. Maybe an alicorn wound healed on a hunter, not on a unicorn.

The ground rumbled, and the hunters’ screams echoed down the alley. There was no time to talk. Zelda and I started to run.

The sky was now light enough to see beyond the next few feet, and over the top of the mist, I caught sight of unicorns leaping from hill to hill like chain lightning over thunderheads, their brindled coats rippling twilight and black, manes crackling around them, fangs bared, hooves pistoning as they rampaged over each rise.

Near the pine tree, Rosamund shouted directions to the hunters still in the trenches, shooting arrow after arrow into the back of any unicorn close enough to give her a clean shot. Melissende, too, had taken refuge on high ground, standing astride the monumental keystone of a tomb’s entrance arch, her
crossbow zinging away. Two kirin with severed horns ran past, and Grace chased them, swinging her katana and screaming at the top of her lungs. They barreled up the rise toward Rosamund, who stood her ground and kept shooting, then suddenly ducked as one leaped clear over her body and landed on the far side of the fence.

Near the van.

“No!” I shrieked and ran forward as they began to butt and kick at the sides and windows. “Stop!”

The windows shattered in the onslaught, and the little van began to rock on its wheels as the two unicorns kept up their attack.

Rosamund had regained her feet but seemed unsure about shooting at the battered van while Giovanni was hiding somewhere inside. I crawled up the hillside, hampered by my weapons and bum arm.

“Stop them!” Stop them!” I screamed. “For the love of—”

Daughter of Alexander, they are distracting you.

I whirled around and looked into the Via degli Inferni, where the six remaining hunters were in the midst of a frenzied battle against more unicorns than I could count. And there, just over the next hillocked tomb, I could see the massive back of the karkadann. Through his eyes, I saw him killing kirin as they poured from the alleys and into the main road.

Cory was fighting four on her own, using a long and short sword combo; Melissende was running out of bolts; Ursula had followed her sister’s lead and climbed to higher ground to use her bow; and Valerija was trying her best to stay out of sight until she was close enough to assist another hunter with her knife. In the midst of the fray, I saw two flashes of silver.
Zelda and Grace, with ax and katana.

And they’d all die.

“Stay down, Giovanni!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. I looked at Rosamund. “Shoot high.” Then I jumped down into the mist again.

My alicorn knife flashed white in the light of the rising sun, and I began to cut a swath through the gathering kirin. The air was filled with shrieks and blood and the overwhelming crush of bodies, slamming against one another, crashing to the ground. I slid on the damp grass and dirt, and for a moment, I forgot I was in the Italian countryside on a beautiful summer morning. This could be the mud plain of Jutland.

Every battle was the path of hell.

I’d almost reached Cory’s side when I heard Melissende shout over the roar, “The big one! Shoot it!”

“No!” I cried, but there was no way she heard me all the way up there. I saw Ursula raise her bow and aim away from the crush, and I yelled and waved my arms, but her focus had shifted to her prey. She released the string.

A massive roar shook the earth, and kirin and hunter alike seemed to freeze for a second and hunker down. Ursula lowered her bow, and even from this distance, I could see the look of dismay on her face. Hooves the size of manhole covers thundered up the hillock toward her. The karkadann’s horn was lowered, and Ursula’s arrow protruded from its flank.

“No!” I screamed again, and swiped at a charging kirin. “No! No! You promised!”

The karkadann roared again.

Treachery! Treachery, Daughter of Alexander!

At this, I saw every hunter still. They’d heard him, too.

The karkadann paused, then raised himself on his hind legs, towering over Ursula’s head, half as high again as the mound upon which they both stood.

“No!” With all my voice, all my heart, all my soul. “She doesn’t know!”

He came crashing down, feet from Ursula, and the tomb crumbled beneath his weight, Ursula shrieked as the ground gave way under her feet and she slipped into the darkness below.

“Ursula!” Melissende wailed, then aimed her crossbow at the karkadann, balancing on the wreckage.

Try me, Daughter of Alexander.
The karkadann faced her flat on.

She paused, in shock, then lowered her weapon. “
Wie bitte
?”

Of course. It made words in our heads. Melissende’s words would be German.

Grace, nearest to the tomb, was shouting. “She’s inside. She says she’s stuck! Someone help me move the rocks!”

But the kirin had started up again, and now the tone of their thoughts had changed. Threaded through the murderous rage was an element of…

Treachery?

“They’re moving!” Rosamund called out from the pine. The battlefield was emptying, kirin sprinting off in ever-greater numbers.

Cory made the victory signal and shouted, before whirling and slicing off the head of a yearling racing by.

No. They weren’t retreating. They were discovering another target. The karkadann’s eyes met mine and he jumped down from the collapsed hill and began to chase the others.

Treachery comes in every human face.

I scowled and sprinted after him.

“Astrid!” Cory’s voice came from behind me. “We did it!”

I ran, hardly even sure where we headed, but certain that it was far from over.

The path narrowed as it moved farther away from the tombs, and the deep banks on either side of the excavation gave way to low, gentle slopes and tree-covered wilds. I couldn’t keep up with the animals, hard as I tried, and as their lead increased, I found I couldn’t keep up the inhuman hunter pace, either. I began to shed my heavier weapons. The claymore. The bow and quiver.

Every hundred yards or so, I came across another dead kirin. Bucephalus was taking them out as he came upon them. The trail of dead was enough for me to follow, and I soldiered on; but then I could find no more bodies, and my hunter sense was scattered and vague. I couldn’t sense the karkadann at all, and I knew every kirin had fled. I was ready to stop altogether, when the house came into view. The chain link gate separating the path from the yard had been battered to smithereens.

I put on a fresh burst of speed, clambering over the broken gate and rushing into the yard as fast as my tired legs would take me. There were two dead German shepherds near the building, and three dead kirin on the terrace. No sound came from the building.

Near the back was a sliding glass door, now as smashed as Giovanni’s windshield. The furniture within had been knocked about or flattened, and there were two more kirin bodies bleeding out on the floor. I followed the trail of destruction, though I knew it was too late.

There was a large hallway lined with empty cages big enough to hold zhis. Beyond this, the building opened into a large central courtyard. Here I saw the final kirin facing off against the karkadann.

“What are you doing?” I screamed with what little voice I had left, but he did not answer me, just pounced on the smaller animal and ran it through. I stared, appalled, as he gutted the kirin, dragging out its entrails and stomping them into mush against the stone.